


The News That You‘re Dead

by Kritty



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Brothers, Friendship, Gen, Ghosts, Mentions of ghosts, No Dialogue, Overdosing, References to Drugs, Short One Shot, Temporary Character Death, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:00:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27162157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kritty/pseuds/Kritty
Summary: "It wasn‘t until Klaus misjudged a dose that he understood he finally was the lost cause people had mistaken him for for years and years before. Ben shook his head, the joint laughter mere minutes ago forgotten, face pinched in a weird way – and Klaus laughed, he gurgled softly until his eyes finally rolled back."(vage spoilers for season 1)-------------After a rewatch I pondered over the introduction of Klaus Hargreeves and this little snippet came to my mind. Please excuse my rusty writing and language, this is the first fanfic story I'm posting in a long long while. English is not my first langauge and I'm not speaking or writing it as often as I'd like. Thank you :)
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves
Kudos: 11





	The News That You‘re Dead

**Author's Note:**

> The character death in this is, as you might assume, temporary.
> 
> Disclaimer: These characters are not mine, I don't earn any money from this. 
> 
> \----------------------------------------------

_„Have you heard the news that you're dead?  
No one ever had much nice to say  
I think they never liked you anyway  
Oh take me from the hospital bed  
Wouldn't it be grand it ain't exactly what you planned  
And wouldn't it be great if we weren't dead?“  
_ \- Dead! by My Chemical Romance

People might think he had been a lost cause long before he left his childhood fully behind. But that was not the case. Klaus had held on a lot longer than people gave him credit for. Hard drugs only came later, several years after Ben had died, when he finally reached the conclusion that weed and alcohol just wouldn‘t cut it.  
It hadn‘‘t been enough.

And he had bounced back many times, going into rehab every few months, keeping up the illusion that he wasn‘t on a journey to loosing his way fully. But he was set up to fail, really.

Ben, always the grumpy shadow next to him, would give him exasperated looks, shaking his hooded head and rolling his eyes. Klaus, smiling and stretching on a ratty couch , a dirty bathroom stall, or a fancy divan, would just laugh throatily until his eyes rolled back and his body would go limp. The dead people would cease to exist and Klaus would be free – granted, also pretty unconscious, but free of death and rotten walking corpses in sepia.

It wasn‘t until Klaus misjudged a dose that he understood he finally was the lost cause people had mistaken him for for years and years before. Ben shook his head, the joint laughter mere minutes ago forgotten, face pinched in a weird way – and Klaus laughed, he gurgled softly until his eyes finally rolled back. And then he kind of didn‘t wake up, kind of died but not really.  
Klaus hadn‘t been there so he couldn‘t say. Ben only told him later on, first in a clipped and angry tone and then mockingly and in a strange passive-aggressive way. Klaus hadn’t been _there_ and hadn’t been anywhere else either, but he was more free than ever, whilst not feeling anything. And when electricity flowed through his body to revive it, it not only woke up his floppy arms and legs, his tissues, bones and fat. It woke up his mind, racing through it and hunting the rotting walking corpses away, fizzled the ghosts into blackness that was filled with the whitest light Klaus had ever seen. His world was full of fireworks for a split second – that and a slightly hurting heat on his chest.

It was like being born again, like flowing through dark waters and breaking through the surface into cold and spicy, startling air and seeing nobody. He didn‘t see a Dead One for a little while after that, never did.

And Klaus immediately decided, that first time, that this was his newest, the hardest drug.  
It didn‘t even matter that he would, in fact, always see _Ben_. Ben never left. He would stare at him and mutter „dickhead“ at him. But Klaus would only pant and stroke his reddened chest, wink at his brother and close his eyes, enjoying the marvellous absence of Dead Ones. He could ignore Ben for the time being, he was different anyway.  


They were either kind of alive together, or kind of dead together, so there was that.


End file.
